1941: World Peace

The year of 1941 which saw the widening of the European and Asiatic wars into the second great World War, a war in which the destiny of mankind was even more at stake than in the first World War, has at the same time increased the determination of many of the leaders and peoples involved to build after the war lasting foundations for peace.

Causes of the War.

It became more and more clear that the root of the war was not to be sought, as superficial observers sometimes believed, in the Treaty of Versailles—for the first World War had started without such a treaty existing and at a time when Germany was victorious and at the height of her economic prosperity and feeling of power—but in the fact that after the first World War the victors refused to build up a system of collective security which would make aggression impossible anywhere. The victorious democracies, above all the American and the British peoples, shirked the responsibility for world order and withdrew into isolationism. It became more and more clear that had they stood together in preventing aggression, first in 1931 in Manchuria, then in 1935 in Ethiopia and in 1938 in Austria, they would not be obliged today to fight for their lives against powerful enemies whom they had supplied for years with arms and raw materials and whom they had allowed to occupy one strategic position after the other until endangering the very lifelines of the United States and of Great Britain. A cooperation between the democracies after the first World War would have made a second World War impossible. Instead of that the democracies offered the picture of disunity, of mutual jealousy and distrust, which encouraged the prospective aggressors to believe that they would be able to defeat the democracies one by one. It is most hopeful that the democracies seem this time determined, not only to achieve victory but to establish a lasting peace made secure by their continuous lasting cooperation in military and economic fields.

Future Principles for the World at Peace.

Such a will was also expressed in the letter to President Roosevelt which the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States sent to him on behalf of all the members of their church on Dec. 24, 1941. Pledging their full-hearted support for the war effort of the United States, they demanded victory, 'not for national aggrandizement but for common security in a world in which individual human lives shall be safeguarded and the will to live on the part of all nations, great or small, shall be respected, a world in which the eternal principles of justice and charity shall prevail.' In that the bishops accepted the principles announced by Pope Pius XII as the foundations of world peace, namely, the assurance to all nations, small and large, of the right to life and independence, and reparations in every case that this equality of rights has been destroyed; progressive disarmament and security for the effective implementing of such an agreement; some juridical institution guaranteeing the loyal fulfillment of agreements and their revision if necessary; due regard for the needs and demands of racial minorities; guidance by the moral law and universal love. These principles were endorsed by the leading religious heads of Great Britain, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council. They added five further points, namely, the abolition of the extreme inequality in wealth and possessions; equal opportunities of education for every child regardless of race and class; safeguard of the family as the social unit; restoration of the sense of divine vocation to man's daily work; use of the resources of the earth for the whole human race.

Atlantic Charter.

Of similar importance and of similar intent, though more modest in its compass, was the by now famous Atlantic Charter which was worked out on August 1941 in a meeting somewhere in the Atlantic between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It was published on Aug. 14, and accepted on Jan. 2, 1942, as the basis of their war and peace aims by the United Nations which were bound in the common struggle to Germany, Italy and Japan. This Atlantic Charter consisted of eight points which stipulated: (1) no aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise (2) no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned (3) the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live (4) enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and raw materials of the world (5) fullest economic collaboration between all nations (6) assurance of a peace affording safety to all nations (7) freedom for all to traverse the high seas without hindrance (8) pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security the disarmament of aggressor nations as an essential condition for lightening the burden of armaments for peace loving peoples.

This was the most authoritative statement so far of the bases of world peace as envisaged by the leaders of the nations fighting for peace and human decency and equality among nations. But there have been several attempts, undertaken either by private organizations or by governments, to go beyond the Atlantic Charter in charting the course of mankind in future years.

Other Blueprints for the World at Peace.

In the United States a Commission to Study the Organization of Peace with James T. Shotwell as chairman and Dr. William Allan Neilson as chairman of the executive committee was organized and issued on June 6, 1941, a statement in which it was said that the American people are now paying the price of two decades of international irresponsibilities. Therefore the Commission recommends to provide a substitute for war which can adequately settle disputes between nations; freer commercial interchange and more equitable living standards for the nations; adequate guarantees for racial, religious and political minorities; and furtherance of international understanding through free exchange of opinions. 'Democracy, by its very principles, must concede to each nation the form of government which its people desire subject to the assurance by law of standards of individual liberty within each nation, and subject to an international guarantee against aggression by any nation. We hold that an international Bill of Rights, with such guarantees, is an indispensable basis of our own peace and security. It is a prerequisite to the realization of the above aims that the forces of lawlessness now dominant in so much of the world should be checked and overthrown.'

While this proposal envisaged only a close collaboration of sovereign nations in the fields of military defense and economic organization, several other schemes of world peace were advanced which envisaged a federal structure of the world. On Dec. 18, 1941, on the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Bill of Rights, Federal Union submitted a petition to the President of the United States to submit to the Congress a program for forming a powerful Union of free peoples to win the war, the peace and the future, as the first step in the gradual and peaceful extension of the American principles of federal union to all peoples willing and able to adhere to them, so that from this nucleus may grow eventually a universal world government of, by and for the people. The petition pointed out that mankind in a world war is in one of those molten moments when the iron of basic policy can and will be shaped. 'The people of our original thirteen states created the United States itself as a war measure. They then developed this emergency war policy into a permanent way to keep the peace among their states. Since then every American generation has boldly extended these principles of freedom through union to more states. Canada, Australia, The Union of South Africa have already adopted these same principles. Britain showed its faith in them when it begged France, tragically too late, to change alliance into union. In our own American principles of federal union lies the time-tested answer to our problem. Let us take up this task at once and turn this great danger into a great opportunity. Let us begin now a World United States.'

Plans for Post-war Alliances.

Meanwhile the idea of federation was taken up on a much more restricted basis by several European countries. The beginning had been made first by the governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland by concluding a close alliance for the future foundation of a federation between the two countries though, as should be pointed out, they had been on not too friendly terms for the 20 years between the two world wars. At the occasion of the conference of the International Labor Organization in New York at the beginning of November 1941, the delegates of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece laid the foundations for a federation of Central European and Balkan peoples as one of the keystones of future world peace. These governments were among those present at the Conference which gave unanimous approval to a resolution presented by delegates from 22 countries, including the United States, Mexico and other Latin American countries in which it was said that 'it is only the victory of free nations the world over which are fighting for democracy and for the maintenance of the inalienable rights of man, which can save the world from hopeless chaos.'

Ways and means of implementing the social and economic principles laid down in the Atlantic Charter were also discussed. A resolution concerning measures for the immediate post-war period as a prerequisite for world peace, was presented by the American delegation. It declared that 'the close of the war must be followed by immediate action, previously planned and arranged, for the feeding of peoples in need, for the provision and transportation of raw materials and capital equipment necessary for the restoration of economic activity, for the reopening of trade outlets, for the resettlement of workers and their families under circumstances in which they can work in freedom and security and hope, for the changing over of industry to the needs of peace, for the maintenance of employment, and for the raising of standards of employment throughout the world.' For that purpose the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field will be a necessary prerequisite.

The delegations of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece, however, went beyond mere economic and political collaboration. They set as their goal the establishment of a federation of 100,000,000 people from the Baltic Sea to the Aegean Sea, united in a union with common defense forces, common customs and monetary systems, and a common foreign policy, while preserving the full cultural independence and equality of all the nationalities composing this federation. Such a step would ensure a peaceful development for the many nationalities living in Central and Southeastern Europe whose dissensions and jealousies in the last twenty years have facilitated the conquest and military occupation of their countries by powerful aggressive neighbors. Such a Central European federation could be a regional member in a wider and probably looser form of military, political and economic collaboration of all the peoples on the earth.

Russian-Polish Alliance.

In that direction it was a most hopeful and promising sign that on Dec. 4, 1941, Joseph Stalin for the Soviet Union and Gen. Sikorski for the Polish government signed in Moscow a declaration of friendship and mutual aid. It is noteworthy that the head of one of the most Roman Catholic and conservative nations of Europe and the head of the Communist Soviet state agreed in 1941 upon a common platform of action, while their countries had lived from 1919 to 1939 in a permanent state of tension and distrust. This declaration, which may represent a milestone towards the building of a world peace which could include nations of widely divergent views and ways of life, as long as they are peacefully minded and recognize the general laws of civilized conduct between states, said that 'German Hitlerite imperialism is the worst enemy of mankind and no compromise is possible with it. Both governments, as long as the war lasts, will give each other full military assistance. In peace time their mutual relations will be based on friendship, cooperation and the carrying out of obligations undertaken. Once the war has been brought to a victorious conclusion and the Hitler criminals duly punished, the task of the Allied governments will be to establish a just peace. This can only be achieved by a new organization of international relations based on the association of democratic states in union. Such an organization to be a decisive factor must have respect for international law and be supported by the armed forces of all the Allied governments. Only thus can it be guaranteed that the catastrophe caused by the Hitlerites shall never repeat itself.'

Building of a New World.

Thus it may be said that in the midst of the second World War the recognition was growing on all sides in the democratic world, which was opposed to the forces of national socialist Germany and of imperialist Japan, that an organization of world peace must be the war's outcome, so as to make a repetition of the pattern of conquest underlying Fascist aggression everywhere impossible. As President Roosevelt said in his message to Congress on Jan. 7, 1942: 'We of the United Nations are not making all the sacrifices of human effort and human lives to return to the kind of world we had after the last World War. We are fighting today for security, for progress and for peace, not only for ourselves, but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient ills.' See also articles on various nations involved and on World War II.